Donald Williams, a former Lambton County warden and long-serving municipal politician in the former Dawn Township, died Tuesday. He was 85.

Williams believed in getting involved in the community and working to make it a better place to live, said his son David Williams, fire chief in Dawn-Euphemia Township.

"He was real big on that," Williams said.

"'If you had time to complain,' he said, 'you have time to join.'"

Donald Williams was born in 1928 in Detroit, where his father worked for Ford. His mother's family was from the Dresden area and Williams came to Canada at the age of nine.

He farmed for a living in what was then Dawn Township and served on township council in the 1960s and 1970s, and again in the early 1990s.

In 1976, Williams was reeve of Dawn Township and was elected warden of Lambton by his fellow members of county council.

Dawn and neighbouring Euphemia Township amalgamated in the years after Williams retired from municipal politics.

Mayor Bill Bilton said he and Williams never served on council together, but they knew each other well.

"He was quite a community worker, both locally and for the county," Bilton said.

Williams chaired the committee that organized the International Plowing Match held in Lambton in 1973, served on the board of the Rural Ontario Municipal Association and was its chairperson at one point, Bilton said.

He stayed involved in the community later in his life, most recently serving on the board of the Lambton County Homes Corporation that operates seniors’ apartment buildings in Forest and Enniskillen Township.

"He was a great promoter of both this area and the county," Bilton said.

Williams married Ruth (Miller), who died in 2010, and they had two daughters and two son.

His son Gerald died in 1986 and Gerald’s wife Leslea Williams is a long-serving member of the municipal council in Dawn-Euphemia.

"Don will be missed by many," she said.

"He was happiest helping people, and he had a deep, deep love for Lambton County."

She and Williams served one term together on township council and there was rarely a day her father-in-law didn't stop in at her farm, she said.

"If he wasn't here, he either called or he left these notes in my mailbox," she said. "Oh, they were priceless."

Visitation is scheduled for Thursday, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the Badder Funeral Home and Reception Centre, 679 North St., in Dresden. A funeral service will be held there Friday at 11 a.m.

The family has asked that anyone wishing to make donations in Williams' memory make them at the funeral home by cheque to the Lambtonian Villa common room project.

It's a project Williams was involved in recently at the seniors’ apartment building that sits next to Lambton Meadowview Villa.

"Right to his dying days, he was so committed to that project," Leslea Williams said.